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Harper’s mission

by Lawrence Solomon
Feb 3, 2012 – 6:47 PM ET


He is the only PM in memory who has shown any
spine in his dealings with China’s brutal plunderers

When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets China’s President Hu
Jintao in Beijing next week, it will be a meeting between a growing,
newly confident power and one that is unsure of itself and its place
in the world. Harper heads the confident power. Hu stands atop a vast
chaos, a seething, heaving economy of plunderers that keeps the
plundered at bay through an army of spies and thugs, of thieves that
pirate the West’s designs and innovations, and of military adventurers
who threaten to seize property and resources from nearly all its
neighbours.

In aid of its territorial claims against its neighbours, China’s
military – the world’s largest after the U.S.— has been growing
rapidly and, most believe, surreptitiously — some estimates, such as
from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, have had
China underreporting military spending by a factor of five. Under this
onslaught, Vietnam fears for its Spratly Islands, Japan for the
Senkaku Islands, Taiwan for itself.

As remarkably, China’s official accounts show it to spend even more
keeping its citizens in check — it calls this “social stability
maintenance” — than on its military. Spending on social stability,
which includes police, jails, and an elaborate domestic surveillance
system that tracks citizens, has been increasing at a blistering rate
– almost 14% in the current year. As with military spending, many
believe the Chinese government is understating these expenses, too, to
hide the shame of needing to crack down on a populace that holds it in
contempt, that increasingly mocks its ham-handed stupidity, and that
increasingly confronts it.

The number of protests against injustices has been steadily climbing.
In 1993, according to the Chinese Police Academy, China experienced
8,700 “mass incidents.” By 2006, that figure had soared to more than
90,000 and in 2010, according to an estimate from Tsinghua University,
it doubled to 180,000. The great majority of the protests are not
political but economic, typically by communities protesting against
the confiscation of their land by developers in league with corrupt
government officials.

To defuse this powder keg, the government sometimes attacks, sometimes
appeases, sometimes both. In one high profile protest last September,
thousands of villagers in the southern community of Wukan demonstrated
against the seizure of their farmland, leading to attacks by riot
police, a counterattack by villagers, and a government siege of the
village designed to starve the village into submission. After
withering foreign coverage (but almost none in China’s official
media), the government finally caved, agreeing to fire the corrupt
officials and suspend the land seizures pending an investigation. The
village of Wukan this week even conducted fair and free local
elections, thought to be a first in today’s China.
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But the appeasement of Wukan is very much the exception. China is
today more repressive than at any time since the Tiananmen crackdown
in 1989. Critics are being increasingly detained, beaten, or jailed
for crimes such as “inciting subversion of state power” after writing
essays on constitutional democracy.

“Disappearances” of dissidents are not only on the rise in China, the
government’s draft criminal code is effectively legalizing them,
raising fears that disappearances will become a common feature in the
China of tomorrow. Chinese government caseworkers, in an odd mix of
bureaucracy and brutality, advise their dissident “clients” on the
liberties they may exercise (such as speaking to the press or writing
an article), when they may exercise their liberties, and the merits of
leaving their homes for extended periods of time, for either an exile
in the countryside or outside China altogether.

What does Harper want with this government, about which he cannot have
any illusions — he is, after all, the only Canadian prime minister in
memory who has shown spine in his dealings with China. Harper travels
not as a supplicant, as did former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and
his Team Canada of businessmen, but from a position of power, the
leader of a country whose resources China, among others, covets. The
itinerary for the Harper trip mostly reads like a goodwill foray —
signing of “co-operation agreements,” a visit to the panda zoo,
sealskin attire to promote Newfoundland jobs and other made-for-photo-
op occasions. Harper hopes the Chinese will formally agree not to
plunder Canadians who invest in China but he must know that China
signs such agreements easily, and then fails to enforce them.

The takeaways from Harper’s trip to China — apart from the pandas that
will soon visit Canada — have little to do with China proper. By
promoting seal products, Harper will show Newfoundlanders he is
standing up for their culture. By being respectful to China, Harper
will please the large and chauvinistic Chinese-Canadian community.
Mostly, however, Harper is going to China to impress upon the U.S. the
danger of taking Canada for granted.

The Keystone pipeline, which President Obama has refused to permit in
deference to his environmental funders, will be one of the major
election issues in the U.S. presidential campaign. The prospect that
Canada will ship its oil thousands of kilometres west across an ocean
to China, instead of directly south to its ally and friend, offends
Democrats and Republicans alike, particularly when doing so also costs
U.S. jobs and makes the U.S. more reliant on unfriendly oil suppliers.
The more the Obama Administration can be pressured, the better the
chance of an early acceptance of Keystone, the more the Americans will
understand where their interests lie. Harper wants this pipeline and
he’s willing to go to China to help secure it.

Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com